The lucky ones come with their families, others appear out of the thorn
bushes, walking alone. Five hundred Somalis are now arriving at this bleak
Kenyan outpost every day. They join a population of 267,000 and counting, in a
facility built to shelter just 45,000. While the world has been captivated by
the high seas drama of Somalia's pirates, this human tide has swollen the ranks
of Dadaab, turning it into the world's largest refugee camp.

The new arrivals sit in their hundreds under a makeshift tarpaulin, trying
to keep perfectly still in temperatures that reach 40C in the shade. It speaks
volumes for the horrors unfolding in Somalia that people will abandon their
homes, risk arbitrary arrest, death or starvation to reach the desolate welcome
on offer in this corner of northern Kenya.

These people are proof of the human cost of the accelerating collapse of
Somalia, yet their fate attracts nothing like the global interest that
surrounds Somali piracy and its threat to commerce. The UN refugee agency
(UNHCR) that runs Dadaab urgently needs new money from international donors and
new land from the Kenyan government. Neither has been forthcoming. The annual
budget for this camp is $19m (£13m) – roughly half the annual operational cost
of a single warship patrolling the Indian Ocean in search of modern-day
Blackbeards.

The story of Dadaab is in some senses the story of modern Somalia. Its three
camps, Hagadera, Ifo and Dagahaley, were built to house those who fled when the
last functioning central government – that of socialist dictator Siad Barre –
collapsed in 1991. The camps soon reached their initial capacity and as the
mother country just 50 miles to the north has sunk deeper and deeper, so the
number of refugees has risen and risen. An entire generation of children has
grown up knowing Dadaab as their only home. There have been 14 failed governments
since then, Somalia is in a state of anarchy and Dadaab is facing an
extraordinary influx. Last August the land ran out and the UN had to declare
the camps full. It has not stopped the desperate masses arriving.

Somalia is a country surrounded by political walls. Its land borders with
Ethiopia and Kenya have been closed to protect their countries from the Islamic
militias on the other side. In reality the only effect of the closures has been
to make it even harder for people like Osman Hussein Bare to flee. With his
family seated in a tired circle around him, the middle-aged man stands to tell
his story with some dignity. "There is war in Somalia," he explains.
"A lot of bullets; day and night they are fighting in the place."

A farmer from a village close to the coastal city of Kismayo, Mr Bare found
his life taken over by the emergence of the powerful Al-Shabaab militia. The
breaking point, which sent him trekking for two nights across a sealed border
to another country, came when the militants began to dig up the remains of
religious leaders from Islamic sects they considered their rivals. "The
way they rule I cannot live under them," he said.

Amina, 22, was not one of the lucky ones. She was separated from her family
and has arrived alone from Kismayo. During her fortnight's journey to reach
Dadaab she was badly beaten twice, once by militiamen and once by Ethiopian
soldiers. She says: "I'm a woman, I'm vulnerable and there's no government
to protect me."

By midday at the UNHCR's registration office at Dagahaley camp, a state of
organised chaos prevails. Lines of worn and exhausted people queue in all
directions; young children howl as they are given basic vaccinations. The prize
on offer is a ration card. Outside the high fence faces and fingers push against
the wire, some desperate, some curious. "Some people will have to come
back tomorrow," Andy Needham from UNHCR explains. Registration means
access to basic food and a rudimentary kit to build a shelter. There is no more
land to give so people must find relatives or friends already inside the
swollen camps to accommodate them.

After a week in which the first attempted hijack of a US ship off the coast
of Somalia propelled the troubled nation to the top of the news agenda, it is
the image of a shoeless young Somali, armed with a rocket launcher and shielded
by a foreign hostage, that has remained with much of the world. In fact, the
hundreds of thousands of Somalis in Dadaab are as much victims of those pirate
gangs as the foreign sailors captured in the Gulf of Aden. Food supplies to the
camps were delayed by this week's surge of hijackings and the refugees' rations
have been cut by one third. A recent report on Dadaab by Oxfam described
conditions as "conducive to a public health emergency".

The outlines of that are clearest at the N-0 encampment which lies on the
fringe of the Ifo facility. It is known to regular visitors as the "end of
the world". There are no buildings here, just white UNHCR tents and
balloon-shaped shelters that refugees have built from sticks and bits of
plastic. Everything has been blasted by red dust and nothing grows here but the
ragged, thorned acacia trees. The shelters are packed so tightly together there
is barely room to walk between them. A fire here would have no natural barriers
and the consequences would be devastating. Yet each night hundreds of families
cook on open hearths, there is no other choice.

This is just one of the nightmares that is haunting David Kangethe, a
programme manager for Care International, the agency struggling to deliver
basic services like water, sanitation and rubbish collection.

"Refugees are building everywhere. This place is a matchbox, if you lit
it up it would just burn," Mr Kangethe sighs. There are chronic water
shortages, sanitation facilities are overwhelmed and diseases like cholera are
rife. The need for new land is acute but so far the Kenyan government has
dragged its feet, citing complaints from the local community that they are
being overwhelmed by the number of refugees. Some 70,000 people live in the
surrounding area, mainly animal herders who fear the loss of grazing land and
scrub forest.

What is needed, according to aid workers, are three to four new camps but
negotiations with Nairobi have remained deadlocked. UNHCR has looked at what it
would cost to give people the basic minimum living standard. The answer is $92m
and an urgent appeal has been issued. The response has been a near-deafening
silence. The UK offered £2m in new money last week. Similar small pledges are
trickling in but observers believe donors are waiting for a major crisis to
break out before taking real action. That may happen very soon.

"If the numbers continue to increase we're headed for a crisis,"
says Mr Kangethe of Care. In the meantime anti-piracy efforts will continue to
dominate thinking in regard to the Somalia situation. Gerry Simpson from the
New York-based Human Rights Watch says the equation is simple: "When
commercial interests are at stake there's money. When it's women and children
there is not."

Survivors' stories

Ahmad Abdullahi Hussein

I was part of a militia that was fighting against al-Shabaab. We had to
fight them. At night I was attacked in my home. I managed to go from the
window. Later I found my wife was killed and only my two children Anisa and
Abdulmalik were alive. The others were dead. I couldn't do anything. No-one can
do anything against them.

I brought my children here to find my mother. She is in Hagadera camp, I
want to be reunited with her. The children have no mother, they need mine.

Habib Waleda

In Mogadishu bombs were coming down from the sky and hitting houses. When
the mortar hit my house we all just ran away. We were separated. I had nine
children. Now I don't know where my husband is or where eight of my children
are. I looked for them in Mogadishu but they don't have a telephone. It's
impossible to find them. I found a taxi and I offered to give him the small
money I had. I gave him $150 and I told him I didn't have any more money. He
brought me near to the border. I don't know where they are. All I have is to
hope they are coming.

Mohamed Ali

I am 70 years old. I fled from a town called Barra. I have lost my wife and
my two children. I think they have gone to Bosasso, but I have not seen them
for a year. I had to walk for 15 days through the desert. It was hard for me to
walk because I am blind.

I had to stop and ask people for a little food along the way. Even if I go
out and walk on the streets now a member of my family could walk by me and I
would not see them. I have to hope that they will see me.

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